Monash university’s websites will begin to operate under its own .monash domain name, a world first, the university said on Tuesday.

The university revealed it was the first “globally recognised organisation” to be delegated a generic top-level domain (gTLD), an alternative to .com, .org and other web address suffixes.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the global internet governing body, drew the lottery for top-level domain application approvals in December 2012. The first of 500 Australian companies on the list was iSelect, reportedly ranked at 173. Monash placed 338th.

Other Australian applicants include Australia Post, the Commonwealth Bank, SBS, Woodside Petroleum and the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. The application for and implementation of a gTLD costs millions of dollars, News Corp Australia reports.

Monash will continue to use its monash.edu.au domains but will phase .monash into its communications after two .monash websites go live “in the near future”.

A number of other companies, including iSelect, have been granted one or more gTLDs but have not been delegated with new domains yet, meaning they are yet to go live.

“The .monash global top-level domain name will allow the university to manage all of its domain names under the global identity of Monash,” the chief information officer of the university, Dr Ian Tebbett, said in a statement.

“Monash recognises how the internet has dramatically changed the world, including the education and research activities of the university.